


all the blood we've shed in another life

by Dark_Writer



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: F/M, TW: mentions of character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 03:50:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9639578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dark_Writer/pseuds/Dark_Writer
Summary: In this life, they were meant to be. It's all that matters because he is not Emerys and she is not the witch he so feared she would become. So they wait, together for an eternity of yearning and need.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vyoria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vyoria/gifts).



> Because _someone_ planted this idea in my head and it wouldn't go away.

There’s a tinge of darkness in her eyes as she looks down at him. He’s on his knees before her, hands clasped behind his back, only meeting her gaze because she demands it. His breeches are tight, growing tighter the longer she looks at him, and he can’t help the shiver that goes down his spine when she bites her lower lip.

“I’ve missed you, Emrys.”

“Have you, my lady?”

He can’t help but reply to her in kind, the sarcasm in his voice evident in the echoes ringing around him. He hates that name, hates what he could have become if he had become Emrys, what he would have lost.

He could have lost her, but he tries not to think of that, tries not to think of anything but the hand on his jaw, trailing behind his ear, into his hair. Her fingers curl, tangle themselves until she’s pulling him up, forcing him to her level.

“You know, Arthur used to love when you fought him like that, but there’s something about your _tone_ …”

He allows himself to smirk, knows that he will feel it later when she has him under her.

“Maybe, my lady, but Arthur, at least, had the decency to call me by my name.”

She releases him and he drops to his knees once more. Pain stings at the flesh there through clothes worn thin and he has to close his eyes until it passes. When he opens them again, she’s leaning against the throne, her expression soft.

She reaches out again, hesitant this time. Part of him wants to deny her this, wants to continue with his pettiness over that name, but he can’t do that, not now. He’s been away too long and he needs it as much as she does.

“I’m sorry,” she says when he leans it, allows her to stroke his cheek. “It’s been a long day and I didn’t think.”

There was a time when she wouldn’t even have offered him this much, but it’s been so long since then. Now, in the emptiness of Camelot he can appreciate how much they’ve changed, how far from their old selves they really are now.

“I suppose,” he begins, pauses as he tries to choose his next words. “I suppose pretending around her is a bit much, isn’t it?”

He wants to resent the girl that has her like this, to hate someone like her, but he can’t really. She needs this, needs that kind of light in her life again after they’ve both spent too long in the dark.

Besides, he knows that she’ll never do anything to betray him like that, to betray their memory.

“You have no idea, Merlin.”

He laughs, his tone bitter, longing.

“Of course not, Morgana. I’m not the one surrounding myself with reminders, after all.”

He yelps when her hand disappears, only to pinch his side. It _hurts_.

“Don’t be rude, Merlin,” she says when he tries to shy away from her fingers. “Besides, if anyone were to be a reminder, it would be you.”

He doesn’t have anything to say to that, knows that she’s right. It’s been a while since he’s been able to hide from the way he feels about her, and he knows that she knows it’s why he stays away so much.

Still, he has come here for a reason, for a purpose.

“Morgana…”

She shakes her head, traces his lips with her thumb. When she presses, he takes it in, sucks lightly. The darkness returns to her gaze and he feels his arousal grow even more.

He groans when she pushes further, forces him to take the whole digit in his mouth. He licks eagerly, quickly. His technique’s grown sloppy, but he doubts that she cares, that she even notices with how much her breathing’s changed.

He wants to move, to hold himself as he acquiesces to her, but he doesn’t. He can’t.

When she pulls her hand away, he whines. It makes him feel less human, that sound, but he pushes the feeling down, forces himself to ignore it because there she is again, her lips gentle against his.

She moves slowly at first, hesitant. It’s been so long since they’ve touched each other this way, a long time since he’s even felt the kind of desire she sparks in him, that there’s a dissonance between the two of them. Then there are fingers on the nape of his neck, a tongue in his mouth, and he’s moaning into her kiss.

Flashes of Arthur appear in his mind, flashes of Gwen. Once upon a time this might have felt like a betrayal, but that was before Morgause and Uther and poison had nearly destroyed the tentative thing between them. That was in a time long gone, the aesthetic preserved in this space even as the reality of it faded into the mist of the past.

There’s a shift and he’s being pulled closer. His cock brushes against the throne on the way and he groans, pushes into her prematurely. She catches him with a laugh, smooths his hair back as he presses his lips against her jaw, her neck. She guides him lower, pulls the hem of the dress she’s wearing to give him more skin, more flesh, more of herself.

“Pretty boy,” she whispers, groaning with need when he moves his attention to her breasts. “What would I do without you?”

“You’d die, probably,” he mutters into her skin. “No, you’d definitely die.”

There’s a despondency to his tone that she flinches at. He feels it in the fleeting resistance to his touch, but he can’t help himself. He knows what would happen, knows what the Khilgarrah would have forced his hand into doing if he could and it tears at him in a way that nothing else can.

“Merlin…”

He shakes his head, pulls away for a moment. Morgana reaches out, wipes the tears that paint his cheeks with his sorrow.

“Tell me,” she whispers. “Tell me what lies at the heart of these.”

He tries, but he can’t speak, the words choking him. He doesn’t want to speak, doesn’t want to burden her with the knowledge he carries, the truths of lives unlived, the deception of what they could have become had he not seen her in time.

He saw her then, sees her now, knows that he doesn’t want her to know, but that he cannot hide from her. She has to know, has to see how close they could have come to not being as they are now.

He pulls away completely, waits for her to nod. Sitting between her legs with his back to the throne, he takes a moment to revel in the way her fingers thread through his hair. Sex with Morgana is rough, demanding, forces him to submit, but like this he remembers that they both need it, her the control, he to be taken care of.

“My lady…” he begins, hesitates. “I don’t know where to start, not really.”

He hears her swallow, hears the whispered request for him to start at the beginning. When he waves his hand, the images appear before them on polished stone. He starts from their meeting, from his first mistakes before moving on to her kidnapping, the rift that would have grown between them. Betrayals and death lie between the Morgana and the Merlin in the images he create…the witch and Emerys, he thinks with no small amount of disgust and shame.

Her fingers tighten against him, pull him closer to the throne, to her as if they could melt into each other. She leans down, her fragrance enveloping him once more.

“Mine,” she whispers, the hand not in his hair trailing down his chest, into his shirt. “You are mine and I am yours, Merlin. Those versions of us made different choices, never knew the pleasure we take in each other. They never knew the sounds you make when Arthur milked your cock for all that it was worth and more. Or the way you would rut like a desperate thing when I let you spear me with it. They never knew and they never will know, but you do, don’t you?”

He swallows, nods. In this replica of Camelot, of the age when they were happiest, he cannot lie.

“Good boy.” She twists his head, forces him to move with the motion. “Beautiful boy.”

“Yours,” he whispers, his lips trailing up her leg, “all yours.”

“And Arthur’s,” she reminds him. Long ago, she would never have thought to do so, but they’ve been through too much to ever forget that particular prophecy, wants the passing of it too much. “Always Arthur’s.”

He nods, though he’s not sure how much truth is left in that statement. It’s been centuries, centuries roaming the world, taking care of Morgana, centuries without his king. He’s not sure how much of him can be Arthur’s anymore when his mind keeps saying. _“Morgana, Morgana, Morgana.”_

Still, he holds his tongue as he kisses his way up her leg. Now isn’t the time for that. He’s not sure there ever will be.


End file.
